Countries of the Lower Mekong region are turning to groundwater resources to meet the growing needs for irrigation, industrial use and household drinking water. In the highlands, for example, groundwater resources are pumped to irrigate high-value coffee plants, while in the lowlands, groundwater provides supplementary irrigation for rice growing. Yet groundwater is “invisible” and is…
Civil society partners and local communities brought new dimensions to this year’s Mekong Research Symposium (MRS), which took place in Chiang Rai, Thailand, from 14 – 16 March. They spoke about the value of citizen engagement in deciding what data are useful and who needs the data, why local communities should be involved in collecting…
4,000 training hours, 111 trainees, and 19 government agencies in Lower Mekong countries. Those, in brief, were the numbers highlighted at the wrap-up event for a US-Republic of Korea (ROK) capacity-building project on 4 October 2022. The project, ‘Improved Hydrological and Hydraulic Decision Support for the Mekong Basin,’ took place over a 13-month period from…